What New College Football Playoff Format Means For Colorado Buffaloes

This structure caused much controversy, so many saw this tweak as warranted. The Boise State Broncos were tabbed No. 3 for winning the Mountain West, an inferior conference to many programs ranked No. 5-12. Boise State was also ranked higher than the Big 12's champion, the Arizona State Sun Devils.

The automatic Group of Five conference bid was not removed in the new playoff format, but the re-seeding essentially locks the bid into the No. 12 seed. Programs like Boise State and rising schools in the American Athletic Conference like the Memphis Tigers and Tulane Green Wave still get a shot at the Playoff, but they'd have to face the No. 5 team in the country just to keep playing.

Additionally, it will keep the precedent of awarding an automatic bid to the top four conference champions, keeping the result of Power Four title games significant.

Colorado controlled its destiny to the Big 12 Championship game in 2024 until disaster struck against the Kansas Jayhawks. Still, the Buffs' 7-2 record in the Big 12 was nearly enough to earn a shot against Arizona State, a team they had not played all season but had the tools to take down.

Instead, the BYU Cougars put the nail in the Buffaloes' coffin with a regular-season finale win over the Houston Cougars and buried them further with an Alamo Bowl beatdown.

The path to the College Football Playoff does not change for Colorado: Win the Big 12. The committee favored the Mountain West over it when seeding the Broncos over the Sun Devils last year, so the Buffs will have to overcome a subpar public perception of their conference.

Colorado will have a crack at every major Big 12 contender from last season and will play many teams predicted to be in the running, starting on Aug. 29 against the ACC's Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets.

BYU returns plenty of production and lies ahead at home on Sept. 27, then the Iowa State Cyclones and Utah Utes in two and three weeks following it. New West Virginia Mountaineers coach Rich Rodriguez wants to restore his program's former glory, then ASU under coach Kenny Dillingham and quarterback Avery Johnson's Kansas State Wildcats to close a nip-and-tuck conference schedule.

Colorado must remedy many losses, headlined by quarterback Shedeur Sanders and wide receiver/cornerback Travis Hunter. To accomplish Coach Prime's vision of a College Football Playoff game on Folsom Field, the Buffaloes must reach their bubbling potential and have the opportunity to conquer a conference needed to get them there.